OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
GL-TSVM: A robust and smooth twin support vector machine with guardian loss function
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Twin support vector machine (TSVM), a variant of support vector machine (SVM), has garnered significant attention due to its $3/4$ times lower computational complexity compared to SVM. However, due to the utilization of the hinge loss function, TSVM is sensitive to outliers or noise. To remedy it, we introduce the guardian loss (G-loss), a novel loss function distinguished by its asymmetric, bounded, and smooth characteristics. We then fuse the proposed G-loss function into the TSVM and yield a robust and smooth classifier termed GL-TSVM. Further, to adhere to the structural risk minimization (SRM) principle and reduce overfitting, we incorporate a regularization term into the objective function of GL-TSVM. To address the optimization challenges of GL-TSVM, we devise an efficient iterative algorithm. The experimental analysis on UCI and KEEL datasets substantiates the effectiveness of the proposed GL-TSVM in comparison to the baseline models. Moreover, to showcase the efficacy of the proposed GL-TSVM in the biomedical domain, we evaluated it on the breast cancer (BreaKHis) and schizophrenia datasets. The outcomes strongly demonstrate the competitiveness of the proposed GL-TSVM against the baseline models.
Enhancing MOTION2NX for Efficient, Scalable and Secure Image Inference using Convolutional Neural Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2024
Year: 2024

This work contributes towards the development of an efficient and scalable open-source Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC) protocol on machines with moderate computational resources. We use the ABY2.0 SMPC protocol implemented on the C++ based MOTION2NX framework for secure convolutional neural network (CNN) inference application with semi-honest security. Our list of contributions are as follows. Firstly, we enhance MOTION2NX by providing a tensorized version of several primitive functions including the Hadamard product, indicator function and argmax function. Secondly, we adapt an existing Helper node algorithm, working in tandem with the ABY2.0 protocol, for efficient convolution computation to reduce execution time and RAM usage. Thirdly, we also present a novel splitting algorithm that divides the computations at each CNN layer into multiple configurable chunks. This novel splitting algorithm, providing significant reduction in RAM usage, is of independent interest and is applicable to general SMPC protocols.
Spectral Informed Neural Network: An Efficient and Low-Memory PINN
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

With growing investigations into solving partial differential equations by physics-informed neural networks (PINNs), more accurate and efficient PINNs are required to meet the practical demands of scientific computing. One bottleneck of current PINNs is computing the high-order derivatives via automatic differentiation which often necessitates substantial computing resources. In this paper, we focus on removing the automatic differentiation of the spatial derivatives and propose a spectral-based neural network that substitutes the differential operator with a multiplication. Compared to the PINNs, our approach requires lower memory and shorter training time. Thanks to the exponential convergence of the spectral basis, our approach is more accurate. Moreover, to handle the different situations between physics domain and spectral domain, we provide two strategies to train networks by their spectral information. Through a series of comprehensive experiments, We validate the aforementioned merits of our proposed network.
What to Preserve and What to Transfer: Faithful, Identity-Preserving Diffusion-based Hairstyle Transfer
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Hairstyle transfer is a challenging task in the image editing field that modifies the hairstyle of a given face image while preserving its other appearance and background features. The existing hairstyle transfer approaches heavily rely on StyleGAN, which is pre-trained on cropped and aligned face images. Hence, they struggle to generalize under challenging conditions such as extreme variations of head poses or focal lengths. To address this issue, we propose a one-stage hairstyle transfer diffusion model, HairFusion, that applies to real-world scenarios. Specifically, we carefully design a hair-agnostic representation as the input of the model, where the original hair information is thoroughly eliminated. Next, we introduce a hair align cross-attention (Align-CA) to accurately align the reference hairstyle with the face image while considering the difference in their head poses. To enhance the preservation of the face image's original features, we leverage adaptive hair blending during the inference, where the output's hair regions are estimated by the cross-attention map in Align-CA and blended with non-hair areas of the face image. Our experimental results show that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance compared to the existing methods in preserving the integrity of both the transferred hairstyle and the surrounding features. The codes are available at https://github.com/cychungg/HairFusion
Addressing the Mutual Interference in Uplink ISAC Receivers: A Projection Method
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2024
Year: 2024

Dual function radar and communication (DFRC) is a promising research direction within integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), improving hardware and spectrum efficiency by merging sensing and communication (S&C) functionalities into a shared platform. However, the DFRC receiver (DFRC-R) is tasked with both uplink communication signal detection and simultaneously target-related parameter estimation from the echoes, leading to issues with mutual interference. In this paper, a projection-based scheme is proposed to equivalently transform the joint signal detection and target estimation problem into a joint signal detection process across multiple snapshots. Compared with conventional successive interference cancellation (SIC) schemes, our proposed approach achieves a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and a higher ergodic rate when the radar signal is non-negligible. Nonetheless, it introduces an ill-conditioned signal detection problem, which is addressed using a non-linear detector. By jointly processing an increased number of snapshots, the proposed scheme can achieve high S&C performance simultaneously.
Spiking Diffusion Models
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2024
Year: 2024

Recent years have witnessed Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) gaining attention for their ultra-low energy consumption and high biological plausibility compared with traditional Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). Despite their distinguished properties, the application of SNNs in the computationally intensive field of image generation is still under exploration. In this paper, we propose the Spiking Diffusion Models (SDMs), an innovative family of SNN-based generative models that excel in producing high-quality samples with significantly reduced energy consumption. In particular, we propose a Temporal-wise Spiking Mechanism (TSM) that allows SNNs to capture more temporal features from a bio-plasticity perspective. In addition, we propose a threshold-guided strategy that can further improve the performances by up to 16.7% without any additional training. We also make the first attempt to use the ANN-SNN approach for SNN-based generation tasks. Extensive experimental results reveal that our approach not only exhibits comparable performance to its ANN counterpart with few spiking time steps, but also outperforms previous SNN-based generative models by a large margin. Moreover, we also demonstrate the high-quality generation ability of SDM on large-scale datasets, e.g., LSUN bedroom. This development marks a pivotal advancement in the capabilities of SNN-based generation, paving the way for future research avenues to realize low-energy and low-latency generative applications. Our code is available at https://github.com/AndyCao1125/SDM.
CooTest: An Automated Testing Approach for V2X Communication Systems
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

Perceiving the complex driving environment precisely is crucial to the safe operation of autonomous vehicles. With the tremendous advancement of deep learning and communication technology, Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) collaboration has the potential to address limitations in sensing distant objects and occlusion for a single-agent perception system. However, despite spectacular progress, several communication challenges can undermine the effectiveness of multi-vehicle cooperative perception. The low interpretability of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) and the high complexity of communication mechanisms make conventional testing techniques inapplicable for the cooperative perception of autonomous driving systems (ADS). Besides, the existing testing techniques, depending on manual data collection and labeling, become time-consuming and prohibitively expensive. In this paper, we design and implement CooTest, the first automated testing tool of the V2X-oriented cooperative perception module. CooTest devises the V2X-specific metamorphic relation and equips communication and weather transformation operators that can reflect the impact of the various cooperative driving factors to produce transformed scenes. Furthermore, we adopt a V2X-oriented guidance strategy for the transformed scene generation process and improve testing efficiency. We experiment CooTest with multiple cooperative perception models with different fusion schemes to evaluate its performance on different tasks. The experiment results show that CooTest can effectively detect erroneous behaviors under various V2X-oriented driving conditions. Also, the results confirm that CooTest can improve detection average precision and decrease misleading cooperation errors by retraining with the generated scenes.
A Comprehensive Review of 3D Object Detection in Autonomous Driving: Technological Advances and Future Directions
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

In recent years, 3D object perception has become a crucial component in the development of autonomous driving systems, providing essential environmental awareness. However, as perception tasks in autonomous driving evolve, their variants have increased, leading to diverse insights from industry and academia. Currently, there is a lack of comprehensive surveys that collect and summarize these perception tasks and their developments from a broader perspective. This review extensively summarizes traditional 3D object detection methods, focusing on camera-based, LiDAR-based, and fusion detection techniques. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the strengths and limitations of each approach, highlighting advancements in accuracy and robustness. Furthermore, we discuss future directions, including methods to improve accuracy such as temporal perception, occupancy grids, and end-to-end learning frameworks. We also explore cooperative perception methods that extend the perception range through collaborative communication. By providing a holistic view of the current state and future developments in 3D object perception, we aim to offer a more comprehensive understanding of perception tasks for autonomous driving. Additionally, we have established an active repository to provide continuous updates on the latest advancements in this field, accessible at: https://github.com/Fishsoup0/Autonomous-Driving-Perception.
TinyTNAS: GPU-Free, Time-Bound, Hardware-Aware Neural Architecture Search for TinyML Time Series Classification
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

In this work, we present TinyTNAS, a novel hardware-aware multi-objective Neural Architecture Search (NAS) tool specifically designed for TinyML time series classification. Unlike traditional NAS methods that rely on GPU capabilities, TinyTNAS operates efficiently on CPUs, making it accessible for a broader range of applications. Users can define constraints on RAM, FLASH, and MAC operations to discover optimal neural network architectures within these parameters. Additionally, the tool allows for time-bound searches, ensuring the best possible model is found within a user-specified duration. By experimenting with benchmark dataset UCI HAR, PAMAP2, WISDM, MIT BIH, and PTB Diagnostic ECG Databas TinyTNAS demonstrates state-of-the-art accuracy with significant reductions in RAM, FLASH, MAC usage, and latency. For example, on the UCI HAR dataset, TinyTNAS achieves a 12x reduction in RAM usage, a 144x reduction in MAC operations, and a 78x reduction in FLASH memory while maintaining superior accuracy and reducing latency by 149x. Similarly, on the PAMAP2 and WISDM datasets, it achieves a 6x reduction in RAM usage, a 40x reduction in MAC operations, an 83x reduction in FLASH, and a 67x reduction in latency, all while maintaining superior accuracy. Notably, the search process completes within 10 minutes in a CPU environment. These results highlight TinyTNAS's capability to optimize neural network architectures effectively for resource-constrained TinyML applications, ensuring both efficiency and high performance. The code for TinyTNAS is available at the GitHub repository and can be accessed at https://github.com/BidyutSaha/TinyTNAS.git.
FastForensics: Efficient Two-Stream Design for Real-Time Image Manipulation Detection
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

With the rise in popularity of portable devices, the spread of falsified media on social platforms has become rampant. This necessitates the timely identification of authentic content. However, most advanced detection methods are computationally heavy, hindering their real-time application. In this paper, we describe an efficient two-stream architecture for real-time image manipulation detection. Our method consists of two-stream branches targeting the cognitive and inspective perspectives. In the cognitive branch, we propose efficient wavelet-guided Transformer blocks to capture the global manipulation traces related to frequency. This block contains an interactive wavelet-guided self-attention module that integrates wavelet transformation with efficient attention design, interacting with the knowledge from the inspective branch. The inspective branch consists of simple convolutions that capture fine-grained traces and interact bidirectionally with Transformer blocks to provide mutual support. Our method is lightweight ($\sim$ 8M) but achieves competitive performance compared to many other counterparts, demonstrating its efficacy in image manipulation detection and its potential for portable integration.
High-Dimensional Sparse Data Low-rank Representation via Accelerated Asynchronous Parallel Stochastic Gradient Descent
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Data characterized by high dimensionality and sparsity are commonly used to describe real-world node interactions. Low-rank representation (LR) can map high-dimensional sparse (HDS) data to low-dimensional feature spaces and infer node interactions via modeling data latent associations. Unfortunately, existing optimization algorithms for LR models are computationally inefficient and slowly convergent on large-scale datasets. To address this issue, this paper proposes an Accelerated Asynchronous Parallel Stochastic Gradient Descent A2PSGD for High-Dimensional Sparse Data Low-rank Representation with three fold-ideas: a) establishing a lock-free scheduler to simultaneously respond to scheduling requests from multiple threads; b) introducing a greedy algorithm-based load balancing strategy for balancing the computational load among threads; c) incorporating Nesterov's accelerated gradient into the learning scheme to accelerate model convergence. Empirical studies show that A2PSGD outperforms existing optimization algorithms for HDS data LR in both accuracy and training time.
Improving Weakly-supervised Video Instance Segmentation by Leveraging Spatio-temporal Consistency
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

The performance of Video Instance Segmentation (VIS) methods has improved significantly with the advent of transformer networks. However, these networks often face challenges in training due to the high annotation cost. To address this, unsupervised and weakly-supervised methods have been developed to reduce the dependency on annotations. This work introduces a novel weakly-supervised method called Eigen-Cluster VIS that, without requiring any mask annotations, achieves competitive accuracy compared to other VIS approaches. This method is based on two key innovations: a Temporal Eigenvalue Loss (TEL) and a clip-level Quality Cluster Coefficient (QCC). The TEL ensures temporal coherence by leveraging the eigenvalues of the Laplacian matrix derived from graph adjacency matrices. By minimizing the mean absolute error between the eigenvalues of adjacent frames, this loss function promotes smooth transitions and stable segmentation boundaries over time, reducing temporal discontinuities and improving overall segmentation quality. The QCC employs the K-means method to ensure the quality of spatio-temporal clusters without relying on ground truth masks. Using the Davies-Bouldin score, the QCC provides an unsupervised measure of feature discrimination, allowing the model to self-evaluate and adapt to varying object distributions, enhancing robustness during the testing phase. These enhancements are computationally efficient and straightforward, offering significant performance gains without additional annotated data. The proposed Eigen-Cluster VIS method is evaluated on the YouTube-Video Instance Segmentation (YouTube-VIS) 2019/2021 and Occluded Video Instance Segmentation (OVIS) datasets, demonstrating that it effectively narrows the performance gap between the fully-supervised and weakly-supervised VIS approaches. The code is available on https://github.com/farnooshar/EigenClusterVIS
Bipedal locomotion using geometric techniques
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

This article describes a bipedal walking algorithm with inverse kinematics resolution based solely on geometric methods, so that all mathematical concepts are explained from the base, in order to clarify the reason for this solution. To do so, it has been necessary to simplify the problem and carry out didactic work to distribute content. In general, the articles related to this topic use matrix systems to solve both direct and inverse kinematics, using complex techniques such as decoupling or the Jacobian calculation. By simplifying the walking process, its resolution has been proposed in a simple way using only geometric techniques.
Smaller, Weaker, Yet Better: Training LLM Reasoners via Compute-Optimal Sampling
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

Training on high-quality synthetic data from strong language models (LMs) is a common strategy to improve the reasoning performance of LMs. In this work, we revisit whether this strategy is compute-optimal under a fixed inference budget (e.g., FLOPs). To do so, we investigate the trade-offs between generating synthetic data using a stronger but more expensive (SE) model versus a weaker but cheaper (WC) model. We evaluate the generated data across three key metrics: coverage, diversity, and false positive rate, and show that the data from WC models may have higher coverage and diversity, but also exhibit higher false positive rates. We then finetune LMs on data from SE and WC models in different settings: knowledge distillation, self-improvement, and a novel weak-to-strong improvement setup where a weaker LM teaches reasoning to a stronger LM. Our findings reveal that models finetuned on WC-generated data consistently outperform those trained on SE-generated data across multiple benchmarks and multiple choices of WC and SE models. These results challenge the prevailing practice of relying on SE models for synthetic data generation, suggesting that WC may be the compute-optimal approach for training advanced LM reasoners.
SAM2Point: Segment Any 3D as Videos in Zero-shot and Promptable Manners
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

We introduce SAM2Point, a preliminary exploration adapting Segment Anything Model 2 (SAM 2) for zero-shot and promptable 3D segmentation. SAM2Point interprets any 3D data as a series of multi-directional videos, and leverages SAM 2 for 3D-space segmentation, without further training or 2D-3D projection. Our framework supports various prompt types, including 3D points, boxes, and masks, and can generalize across diverse scenarios, such as 3D objects, indoor scenes, outdoor environments, and raw sparse LiDAR. Demonstrations on multiple 3D datasets, e.g., Objaverse, S3DIS, ScanNet, Semantic3D, and KITTI, highlight the robust generalization capabilities of SAM2Point. To our best knowledge, we present the most faithful implementation of SAM in 3D, which may serve as a starting point for future research in promptable 3D segmentation. Online Demo: https://huggingface.co/spaces/ZiyuG/SAM2Point . Code: https://github.com/ZiyuGuo99/SAM2Point .
$EvoAl^{2048}$
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2024
Year: 2024

As AI solutions enter safety-critical products, the explainability and interpretability of solutions generated by AI products become increasingly important. In the long term, such explanations are the key to gaining users' acceptance of AI-based systems' decisions. We report on applying a model-driven-based optimisation to search for an interpretable and explainable policy that solves the game 2048. This paper describes a solution to the GECCO'24 Interpretable Control Competition using the open-source software EvoAl. We aimed to develop an approach for creating interpretable policies that are easy to adapt to new ideas.
The Legend of Holy Sword: An Immersive Experience for Concentration Enhancement
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2024
Year: 2024

Concentration is significant for maximizing potential in any activity. However, traditional methods to improve it often lack direct and natural feedback. We propose an innovative and inspiring VR system to experience and improve concentration. In the experience of pulling out the holy sword, which cannot be achieved simply by force, the player receives multimodal concentration feedback in visual, auditory, and haptic senses. We believe that this experience will help the user confront his/her concentration and improve the ability to control it consciously.
Fluent and Accurate Image Captioning with a Self-Trained Reward Model
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Fine-tuning image captioning models with hand-crafted rewards like the CIDEr metric has been a classical strategy for promoting caption quality at the sequence level. This approach, however, is known to limit descriptiveness and semantic richness and tends to drive the model towards the style of ground-truth sentences, thus losing detail and specificity. On the contrary, recent attempts to employ image-text models like CLIP as reward have led to grammatically incorrect and repetitive captions. In this paper, we propose Self-Cap, a captioning approach that relies on a learnable reward model based on self-generated negatives that can discriminate captions based on their consistency with the image. Specifically, our discriminator is a fine-tuned contrastive image-text model trained to promote caption correctness while avoiding the aberrations that typically happen when training with a CLIP-based reward. To this end, our discriminator directly incorporates negative samples from a frozen captioner, which significantly improves the quality and richness of the generated captions but also reduces the fine-tuning time in comparison to using the CIDEr score as the sole metric for optimization. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our training strategy on both standard and zero-shot image captioning datasets.